Property Tax Activist, Melyssa Donaghy's assessment up almost $30,000

UPDATE, 7pm : Received a call from Dave Bond of Stop Indiana who said that another activist received very bad news. Turns out the modest home this activist purchased two years ago for less than $120,000 is reassessed for $350,000 with the new asssessment. Don't forget that we the taxpayers of Marion county get the privilege of paying $1.3 million for these new assessments which are just as inconsistent as the first assessment. Greg Bowes promised us during the 2008 city budget hearing for the county assessors that the new assessments would not be perfect. He didn't seem to think that was a problem. What do you want to bet that Greg Bowes doesn't have a problem with the assessment on his personal property? You can read my impressions about the August 28th budget hearing with Greg Bowes and how right I was in my prediction. --HFFT


Tim Evans of the Indy Star called me today to personally tell me that my assessed value on my home went up nearly $30,000 and to get my reaction. He even wondered with me if it was retaliation for my work on the property tax repeal front. Who knows. All I know is that as long as the government can tax and assess your home, you have absolutely NO CONTROL over you ability to keep one of the largest and most important investments you will ever make in your lifetime...your home.

This year our democrat and republican state legislators approved a budget INCREASE, so they get to spend more of our money. Meanwhile, our property values have DECREASED 10% or more according to state and national realtor reports. Our incomes aren't exactly spiraling up either.

So why is that our employees (the politicians) don't have to cut their spending and budgets, but we (the employers) do? How is that at all fair?

Ask yourselves how long you are going to put up with this. Most of you stopped fighting the fight when the governor called for the reassessments last summer thinking all would be fine. We tried to tell you it was a trick. We tried to get you to take action, but all those personal choices kept getting in the way for most of you.

I hate to be so blunt, but if the people don't get serious about forcing politicians to obey the rule of law and to do our will, things will only get worse. Behind our backs, the politicians laugh at what gullible sheep we are.

Ask yourselves, how did that two-party system treat you during this last legislative session? If you don't like how they treated you, then vote out incumbents and vote for every independent or third party candidate you can and get rid of the lot of them.

In the meantime, you can petition the state of Indiana to refund the portion of your property tax that is improperly collected according to Article 8 of the Indiana Constitution. The attorney John Price wrote the document. You just need to cut and paste it into a new document, have it notorized and send off a copy to the county treasurer (Mike Rodman) and the county assessor (Greg Bowes).

Let's see if we can flood our politician employees with paperwork for the time being.

--Melyssa, activist volunteer